Message Delivery

Abstract

Once political actors have selected the content of their campaign messages (previous chapter), they have to develop effective ways to convey them to citizens. Indeed, finding the right message is not entirely necessary in order to achieve the campaign objectives. Most obviously, voters will not be influenced by messages they have never heard. This chapter considers aspects of ‘message delivery’, the third major element of campaigning. In the following, three choices will be investigated: targeting, the use of the appropriate communication channel, and timing. These decisions will be explained as functions of contextual and actor-related characteristics. Targeting deals with the question of what segments of the population to focus on. As campaign resources are limited and voters differ in their probability of supporting a given camp, targeting specific groups constitutes a means by which to effectively get the main messages across. In the following section, I will argue that political actors involved in direct-democratic campaigns primarily target their own constituencies. In addition to this mobilizing strategy, however, focusing on swing voters is of crucial importance, as winning over this category usually allows for attaining the ultimate goal of achieving victory. The decision to revert to this ‘chasing strategy’ is expected to be positively dependent on the actors’ campaign-specific abilities and motivations.